Network security is becoming increasingly important as the Internet is widely employed for modern communications, such as emails, content sharing, online purchases, and/or banking transactions. However, the Internet has also presented many opportunities for malicious communications or security attacks. A firewall is an example of a network security system that controls the incoming and/or the outgoing traffic of a network or a networking domain based on a set of applied rules. A firewall establishes a barrier between a trusted and secure internal network and another external network, for example, the Internet, that is assumed to be untrusted and unsecure. A firewall may be implemented as a software solution or as a hardware appliance. Some routers that transfer data between networks are integrated with firewall components. Conversely, some firewalls are integrated with basic routing functions.